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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  April 24, 2012 10:00pm-11:00pm EDT

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he moved a giant step closer to becoming the republican nominee tonight. primaries were held in five states in the northeast. he's not yet captured the 1144 delegates needed to officially clench the gop nomination. but he moved much closer to that tonight. romney addressed a crowd of supporters in manchester, new hampshire. he kicked off his campaign for the fall election against obama. it was titled a better america begins tonight. he called the president a disappointment and said the presidency has failed. here's more. >> for every single mom who feels heart broken when she has to explain to her kids that she needs to take a second job and won't be home as often, for grandparents who can't afford the gas to visit their grand children anymore, for the mom and dad who never thought they'd
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be on food stamps, for the small business owner, desperately cutting back just to keep the doors open one more month. to all of the thousands of good and decent americans i have met who want nothing more than a better chance, a fighting chance, to all of you i have a simple message. hold on a little longer. a better america begins tonight. four years ago, barack obama dazzled us in front of greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. but after we came down to earth, after all the celebration and the parades, what do we have to show for 3 1/2 years of president obama? is it easier to make ends meet? >> no! >> is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? >> no! >> have you saved what you need for retirement? >> no! >> are you making more at your job? >> no! >> do you have a better chance to get a better job? >> no! >> are you paying less at the
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pump? >> no! >> you know if the answer were yes to those questions, president obama would be running for re-election based on his record and rightly so. because he has failed he will run a campaign of diversions and distractions and distortions. that kind of campaign may have worked in another place and in a different time. but not here. and not now. it's still about the economy and we are not stupid. >> well, newt gingrich meanwhile campaigned hard in delaware hoped for a victory there. despite not winning delaware or any of the night's five primaries, gingrich insisted he's staying in the race. let's bring in panelists, ari fleischer, paul begala and gloria borger. he hammered president obama pretty hard. >> i thought it was a well crafted speech. well staged speech. he's had problems in the past with his staging. it was a well delivered speech.
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i think it did hit the work he needed to do. strategically he made a big mistake. six times at least in the speech he used some variation of the word fair. fair and unfair. that's very much traditionally a democrat's turf, and if he moves this election to that terrain, then i think governor romney had some problems. i think people will look at the business record and he paid himself millions and laid off people and he raised taxes for the poorest americans ask if that's fair. i would say, mitt, don't go to the fairness thing. >> ari, do you think that's a problem for him? >> i guess this is one of the issues that you want to hear what you want to hear. i heard him talking about the economy and the problems we have had in the last 3 1/2 years. i think he's in fertile territory when he talks about president obama's record. because the record for the last 3 1/2 years have been weak on the economy, on jobs and on growth and gas prices. a lot of the pocketbook issues
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that american people care about. so i do think they're openings on every one of the categories. >> gloria, we definitely heard romney kind of reviving the ronald reagan idea of are you better than you were four years ago and in an effective way with the crowd response. >> of course they said we're not better off in four years ago and i think ate a refrain you'll hear over and over again. something else was interesting to me, he seemed to use the word character a couple of times. talking about the character of america. saying that character matters. and he seems to be turning the support of what he calls big government, or washington, which he would say president obama supports into a character issue. so pitting washington against what he says is his vision for america. which is freedom. i found that to be kind of interesting. another thing that was important to me is that i think he started telling the personal narrative which we haven't heard a lot of.
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talking about his father growing up poor, becoming the governor of a state in which he used to sell paint out of the trunk of his car. admitting that he's a wealthy guy who made his money and sort of taking that head on saying you might have heard that i have been successful in business with a little bit of a sense of humor that we haven't heard so much in the past. so i thought a very good speech for him. >> paul, i want to play another clip of something romney said earlier about president obama. >> government is at the center of his vision. it dispenses the benefits, borrows what it can't take, consumes the greater and greater share of the economy. you know, with obamacare fully installed, government would have control of almost half of the economy. and we would have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society. >> that was the only time, paul, that he mentioned the president's health care plan. obviously given his own record in massachusetts some people might say it's an issue
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difficult for him. do you expect what he calls obamacare to be less of a headline and more of a footnote? >> it's going to have to be an issue because i think the supreme court is going to make it one. but it is interesting, governor romney he sort -- he danced up to it. but he's singari singularly una drive that issue the way that santorum would have. he lost, fair is fair, but it's kind of remarkable. actually, my old cross fire buddy tucker carlson said in the entire country, 315 million people there's only two who ever signed a law imposing the individual mandate on health care and that's barack obama and mitt romney. tough for romney to attack obamacare when it's based on romney care. >> is it tough for him? >> no, if it was tough he would have lost that primary. i think the group that it was toughest with was conservative americans. he's crossed that threshold, this is that etch-a-sketch you could say. now he's on to the general and the reasons he's making it a
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working issue for him is because the statement is i will repeal obamacare. that to a republican audience and independents who don't like obamacare are the words they want to hear. that's the gateway to credibility, even though both paul and tucker are right, he did sign a mandate in massachusetts. >> i still think he's got skeptical republicans though on that issue. that's one of the issues that rick santorum's advisers tells me he wants to talk about. even if you repeal obamacare they want a promise that there will not be any mandates period allowed. they want to hear that from mitt romney. >> paul, it's been reported that former president clinton has been urging the obama campaign to spend less time calling mitt romney a flip-flopper and more time as painting him as severely conservative. do you agree? do you agree with that strategy? >> well, i think in short, yes. not conservative. i don't think this election is
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going to turn on a left/right axis. i think there's peril for the democrats in focusing too much on the flip-flop because i think some of the independent moderate votesers that ari fleischer said might take some comfort in that. he said he'd outright ban contraception, and he'll flip-flop on that. i think the democrats ought to follow mitt romney's true north. from birth to today he's had a true north. he's a product of wealth and power and privilege who's amassed a ton of it and he's amassed a ton of it at the expense of the middle class. it's not left-right, but up and down. i would frame the whole election on who can better build an economy for the middle class? you know, thurston howell iii over there or a guy who was raised by a single mom and worked hand and get to school on merit and scholarship.
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>> do you think that's going to play among the voters? governor romney said i'm not going to be ashamed of success. >> well, the problem with paul's analogy is president obama is taking america on a three-hour tour. i don't think that quite works. you know, what i liked in mitt romney's speech that paul addresses he said that the president shouldn't criticize people for achievement, we should congratulate people for achievement in this country. that's right. that's what makes america great and strong. with need to send a signal to low income people you should achieve and become middle income people and to middle income, you should become upper middle and rich. that's the american success story and it should be celebrated at every step along the economic ladder. that's where i think mitt romney has a chance -- i think that's where mitt romney has a chance to drive home if he is unapologetic about who he is and if he gets more comfortable with who he is. >> but i don't think voters -- >> not at the same time. paul, then gloria.
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>> he needs to apologize for how he gets rich. he is not bill gates or warren buffett of steve jobs who created a new company and provided goods and services. >> but he is saying he created multiple companies. >> he's certainly not telling the whole truth. a vast amount of the wealth was taking over companies, loading them up with debt and paying himself and partners millions of dollars out of the debt and crashing the company into bankruptcy and cancelling the people's health care. he rigged -- some of his investments were good, good for him. he rigged the game to benefit himself in a way that even republicans in the primaries thought was really problematic. >> gloria? >> paul, i don't think voters want to hear the class arguments at this point. i think they want somebody that they believe can fix the economy. and some people are going to say, okay, president obama is on the right course, you just have to give some more time and others are saying, you know what, we gave him enough time it should have been done by now. but i don't think the class arguments really have a lot of
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resonance when people are suffering. >> ari, very briefly. >> well, i was going to say the reason that people come to private equity companies is because they're on the verge of bankruptcy in first place. they're usually the hard to work cases that can't get capital anywhere in the regular marketplace. so they go to firms like a mitt romney firm and either they make it or they break it. that's the nature of these companies that typically can only get capital at those type of firms. >> all right, interesting stuff. let us know what you think. we're on facebook, google plus. remember, john edwards, clean cut john edwards? then came the affair and the child and now the trial. and testimony that will surprise you. what he allegedly said about his mistress, a woman who bore a child for him and what he said about the chances that the child was actually his which in fact she was. [ monica ] i'm away on a movie shoot
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distraught and needed to speak with mr. edwards immediately. i said somebody better be pregnant or dying. she said nobody's dying. young then described edwards' response after learning that hunter was pregnant. quoting him as saying quote, she's a crazy slut and there's a one in three chance it was his child. now, around the same time, the public saw obviously a different john edwards supporting his wife elizabeth as she announced her diagnosis of incurable breast cancer. elizabeth edwards knew of her husband's cheating when they gave this news conference. then hunter gave birth to a baby girl, but that july edwards was still denying the affair and the alleged coverup. >> has you or anyone affiliated with your presidential campaign provided any financial help to rielle hunter or andrew young? >> i have no idea what you're asking about. i've responded to consistently to these tabloid allegations by saying i don't respond to these lies.
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you know that. you have covered me. i stand by that. >> it's fascinating to watch him now, realize he knew he wasn't telling the truth. about a month later in an interview with abc news's bob woodruff, he admitted he cheated on his wife of 30 years, but he still flatout denied this. listen. >> i need to ask about probably the most controversial allegation which a report has been published that the baby of miss hunter is your baby. true? >> not true. it's a supermarket tabloid. that is absolutely not true. >> have you taken a paternity test? >> i have not. i would welcome to participate in paternity test. i would be happy to participate in one. i know this is not possible this child could be mine because of the timing of events. so i know it's not possible. >> well, it was possible. until 2010 he admitted he was the baby's father.
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but in an interview with oprah winfrey, hunter said that edwards knew all along. >> you were pregnant carrying this man's child. you knew it was his child because you weren't seeing anyone else? >> wasn't seeing anyone else. >> you knew it was his child -- >> we both knew it was his child. >> he knew it was his child? >> yes, he did. >> having an affair is not illegal. that's not why edwards can face up to 30 years in prison. prosecutors say he broke federal law by accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars during his second presidential run, money he used to cover up his affair with hunter. today in court, andrew young described how the payments worked. one of the wealthy benefactors the heir es rachel bunny mellon, wrote checks to her interior designer who signed the checks over to young's wife who deposited them into her account in a maiden name. young testified that money was doled out to hunter from that account. it's complicated. the jury is going to have to decide if it was illegal.
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edwards said he knew nothing about any payments made to hunter. i spoke earlier in joe johns who was in the courtroom and analyst jeffrey toobin. i mean, startling testimony today. you have andrew young saying edwards calling hunter a crazy slut and also lying to his wife about the affair. the fact -- i mean, he comes off incredibly unsympathetically to say the least. that's not what he's charged with. he's not charged with being a jerk. >> you see, that's what makes this trial so perplexing. which is so much of it is about what a lousy guy john edwards is. and so much of it is about how lousy a guy andrew young is. the star witness. but how much that relates to the charges against him is not clear. whether the jury can sort out being a bad guy and being a criminal is an open question. maybe all this bad stuff will convince the jury, we just don't like this guy and we're going to convict him. >> a lot of it boils down to what was in john edwards' head.
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was he intending for these wealthy donors to be giving him campaign money he was then funneling to hunter. or was he getting the campaign donors to just cover rielle hunter's expents? >> and were they doing that because he was a friend of theirs in trouble with his wife or were they doing it because he was the presidential candidate? >> joe, you were in the courtroom as young testified about edwards' alleged behavior during this affair with hunter. the elaborate process of funneling money from bunny mellon to her. what was edwards' reaction to young's testimony listening to the things he was saying? >> i got to tell you. the time i spent in that courtroom, i sat right behind him. i really haven't seen much reaction from john edwards at all. he is a trained trial lawyer and he acts like one sitting there even though he's the client. he doesn't show any emotion unless he does it for effect. so he's been pretty stone cold
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silent except for an occasional smile at an appropriate time. and that's just what you'd expect from a guy who spent so much time at the defense table. >> joe, i mean, young testified that edwards basically went shopping for a wealthy donor to support rielle hunter and asked bunny melon because she was the one who offered to pay for the $400 hair cuts. >> right. that's the way it started. the $400 hair cuts became a big dustup in the news media. and bunny melon essentially reached out and said i'll pay for the $400 hair cuts. you don't need to worry about that anymore. andrew young and john edwards looked at this and thought well, maybe she's the person we ought to go to. and interestingly enough in the courtroom, the testimony was that bunny melon essentially was not told the purpose for which this was going to be used.
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she was told, andrew young said, it would be a non-campaign function, but nonetheless he suggested it was a campaign function in order to keep john edwards as a viable candidate. >> if i could add one bizarre thing from the testimony today. edwards is at once this savvy player and you think delusional. at one point he says to young according to young's testimony, well, you know, i can't know about this because i still think i'm going to be sworn in as attorney general. he still thinks he's going to be attorney general during all this stuff swirling around? >> that is in the book "game change" as well about how he thought he might still have a role and might be able to be up for the attorney general spot. young is also testifying that repeatedly a number of times he was concerned about the legality of this and actually asked edwards about it and edwards assured him that he'd looked into it and this was legal.
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>> which it's not clear how that cuts. because it's not clear whether edwards will acknowledge that he ever did look into it. at one point and certainly in public statements edwards said it never even occurred to me that this might be illegal. but at the same time edwards is quoted by young saying i've looked into it and it's legal. it's just one of the many contradictions between edwards' versions of the stories and young's. and we'll start to see which one the jury will believe. >> jeff toobin, joe johns, thanks. let me know what you think on twitter. if you think john edwards is guilty of these federal violations. a lot more happening tonight. the u.n. admitting it's being played in syria. the killing stops when u.n. observers goes in and starts up again when they live. i'll speak to senator john mccain next. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.
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keeping them honest now. a new reason why night after night we keep bringing you images of the killing in syria. the reason is simple but sad. the fact is it's frankly pathetic. our nightly video shot at great risk by ordinary syrians may be the best way to show the cease-fire that bashar al assad agreed to and is breaking day after day. today a spokesperson for the few u.n. professionals now on the ground in syria, these observers. as much as admitted his men are not up to the job. he says there are credible reports and take note at that phrase --
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credible reports. that when observers like these guys in the blue body armor into places like homs, the killing stops. then when they leave, the killing starts up again. and the people who approach the monitors here to talk to them to try to explain to them the horrors that have been inflicted upon them, those people after the monitors leave are then harassed or even killed by syrian security forces. in addition, today the same spokesman said there are not enough monitors to monitor anything. with all due respect, you should have been "360" when we said that weeks ago. only 11 observers are on the ground right now. there might be 300 at some point. it's not like assad is concealing their attempt for the mission. we got this video taken sunday. in it you'll see people telling the observers to look on a nearby rooftop. look at the snipers, look at the snipers, they say. the camera pans up. you see what appears to be a snipers nest and troops on the rooftop.
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if those are snipers that's a blatant violation right in front of the u.n. reporters. remember that phrase. credible reports. why did that spokesperson only say credible reports? his own men saw the troops, saw they weren't supposed to be there. knew what troops had been doing for more than a year in syrian. yet the spokesperson could not say what was in front of his own team's face. keeping them honest, that is why we show you these pictures night after night. they show what diplomats can't say and the assad regime can only lie about. these are tanks and troops on the streets of duma. the ones in the pickup trucks firing as they go. assad promised to pull them out. this is a peaceful protest. this is in aleppo. another broken promise. >> the city of homs, it is still under attack. another broken promise. the shelling there stopping just long enough for monitors to come and go then starting up again. the opposition says at least 35
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people were killed today. hundreds have been killed now since assad agreed to this so-called ceasefire. all across syria, mass graves like this one are said to be filling up. an opposition member today told us what kofi annan's mission is really doing. it's buying assad more time to kill. he sees in his words, a deployment of security forces to the north of his city. this is annan's gift. u.s. senator and former presidential candidate john mccain agrees. he wants america to do more to stop the killing. i spoke to him earlier today. senator, at the holocaust memorial yesterday, president obama said we need to do everything we can to stop the slaughter of innocent people by blood thirsty regimes. that all sounds good, but is it just rhetoric? are we doing that in syria? >> well, anderson, i think it's really kind of paradoxical that the president said quote, remembrance without resolve is a
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hollow gesture. awareness without action changes nothing. but at the same time he only talked about financial and economic sanctions against a person who as we know is slaughtering its citizens. and the latest of course being killing people who talked to the u.n. monitors. it's really sad to see the rhetoric of this administration not only not matched but making almost a joke out of the fact we are literally doing nothing. >> you said before you believe the u.n. has been played in syria. as you pointed out, they have a handful of monitors on the ground. but it seems like the assad regime is playing a game of cat and mouse with these monitors. first of all, the monitors aren't going out on patrol on fridays when they take place. and when they do, the regime stops attacking. but as soon as they leave, they
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try to attack and kill people who met with u.n. monitors. are they doing anything in syria, the u.n.? >> not that i know of. they have now called for additional monitors. but how atrocious is it that the government allows these monitors in, people have the courage to come out and express their grievances and then as soon as the monitors leave they go in and slaughter people. that is such a slap in the face, a repudiation of what this is supposed to be about. again, if it wasn't so serious, it would be a bad joke. >> i spoke to a syrian activist on this program. about the u.n. sending 30 observers to syria. i want to play you some of what he said. >> 30? this is stupid. we need 30 observers for one neighborhood only. the international community should send 3,000 observers and,
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believe me, the regime will fall the same day. the regime will be toppled the same day because we will be rushing to the street for demonstrations. don't tell me they couldn't send more than 30 observers. 30? >> do you have any hope the u.n. mission can do anything in syria? >> i do not. and worse than that, anderson, it gives the people who might be helping more pause while the assurances are given by the u.n. that we ought to give this a chance. it would be fine to give it a chance if they weren't still killing people. in other words, after observers left, they even go into homes and schools and pull people out and kill them. so it's really worse than doing nothing because it is giving sort of an excuse for the international community not to step up. artillery, tanks, helicopters as
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you have shown many times on cnn are still in action. and the syrian people are dying for a cause. and to think that somehow that -- by the way, sanctions on luxury goods will have an effect and i'm not making that up. we have to act in a fashion of leadership of the united states of america with other countries and the first thing we need to do is get these people some weapons so they can defend themselves. >> the white house has created something now called the atrocities prevention board. the president signed a new order authorizing sanctions through internet monitoring, cell phone tracking. is that a positive step for you? >> sure. i think it's a real positive step. and i think in many areas of the world it could probably have some effect. but right now we're in a full fledged civil war, an unfair fight where russian arms are flowing in and on the ground against people who are literally
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defenseless. you and i know that the price of a bullet for a kalashnikov is $4 a bullet on the black market. i have not heard that that price has gone down, have you? >> no. there's a lot of people, though, who may be sympathetic to the plight of syrians being killed by worry about arming opposition, igniting an all-out civil war in that country and a war that spreads throughout the region. >> i heard that same argument about tunisia and libya as well and bosnia and kosovo. but also i think we should point out the longer it drags out, the more likely it is that foreign fighters and radical islamists come into the fight. really these people rose up peacefully. that's a direct repudiation of al qaeda who believes in acts of terror. so the fundamentals of this movement have nothing to do with radical islamist individuals. it has everything to do with people's desire to get out from
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under a cruel and despotic regime. part of the arab spring i might add. >> senator mccain, appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. >> let us know what you think on twitter. what should we do in syria? what can the u.s. do or the international community do. we're following other stories tonight. isha's here with the 360 bulletin. two more members have resign and that means of the 12 members in the prostitution scandal in colombia, all are being forced out. and a bp person has been identified and he's accused of intentionally destroying evidence requested by investigators. 11 workers were killed in the disaster. at a hearing today at ft. meade, maryland, bradley manning request and was granted a change in defense attorneys. he is accused of leaking
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hundreds of thousands of pages of classified military and state department documents while serving in iraq. many of which ended up on wikileaks. two state troopers in new jersey have been suspended without pay. the newark star ledger reports they're accused of providing an unauthorized high-speed escort for a caravan of luxury sportscars being driven to atlantic city last month. other drivers on the highway complained to authorities. all i can say is really? >> yeah, i don't get why -- why would they have done that. kind of odd. very interesting. >> your guess is as good as mine. coming up, in three words to scare the daylights out of people ever since, mad cow disease. a new case discovered here in the united states.
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breaking news tonight. for the first time in six years in six years authorities have a case of mad cow disease on their hands. everyone wants to know is the food supply safe? elizabeth cohen has the very latest. you spoke to the baker commodities company, they have a plant in hanford, california. where a cow tested positive for mad cow disease. >> well, they have only carcasses that are brought to the plant and they do the random testings. so they have hundreds of
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carcasses, that i go and choose let's say about 60. one of them turns out to have mad cow disease. and so what if they hadn't randomly found that animal? well, that animal would have been rendered into something. it might have been soap or chemicals or something that you and i would never eat, something that wouldn't harm us, but it might have been rendered into feed for livestock or poultry. >> and what does that mean? i mean, how dangerous is that? if it had been rendered into livestock that ate it and then people ate the livestock? >> here's why it should not have been theoretically been a problem. you're not supposed to take the brain and turn it to feed and you're not suppose to take the high-risk parts of the body to turn its into feed. theoretically it wouldn't have caused a problem. but there's the worry. >> what does bse stands for?
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>> bovine -- it's the actual real name for the disease. we call it mad cow disease but it's bse. >> you can only get it through the brains and the spinal column of the animal? >> that's what they think. that's why this animal has bse, it was a dairy cow, but if you drink the milk it doesn't matter. it's not infectious. only the nur logical parts of the animals are -- >> how many more cows could there there be that got through? i can remember the pictures of mad cow disease of the animals in europe. the cows shaking. you actually interviewed the first u.s. victim in 2006. >> yes. as hard as it is to watch these pictures of the animals it was even harder to meet this woman. her name was charlene. she didn't want her last name used. she laid there and moaned and moaned. it was so awful to see this. this young, beautiful woman. she lived in the united kingdom
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until she was 13 years old and she was perfectly healthy. but then she moved to the u.s. at 13 and at 23 she started showing signs of this disease. that means that that disease had been lurking in her for at least ten years before she got sick. and anderson, that's one of the scariest things here, that she didn't know she was sick. that's pretty typical for about ten years. some people are infected even longer before they realized it. >> back then, did they not have the rules about the brain or the spinal cord being in the food? >> right. she was living there in '80s and '90s before the rules were enacted. >> bottom line, for someone watching tonight is what? i don't want to freak people out. >> right. exactly. so that woman you just saw and the two other victims in this country of mad cow disease, they did not contract the disease hereme here. i cannot emphasize that enough. they ate meet in the u.k. or in saudi arabia that's how they got infected. there hasn't been a single person who's eaten meat from the
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u.s. food supply and contracted the human version of mad cow disease. and this one cow we're talking about in california experts say that it does not pose a threat to the food supply. it never got into the food supply. it was never slaughtered and put into the food supply and the milk was not infectious. >> elizabeth cohen, thank you for the update. take a look at this. a teenager walking in northwest china walking and falling into the sink hole. details on how she was rescued next. that can be taken with or without food. that's why my doctor recommends citracal maximum. it's all about absorption. i think we should see other people. in fact, i'm already seeing your best friend, justin. ♪ i would've appreciated a proactive update on the status of our relationship. who do you think i am, tim? quicken loans? at quicken loans, we provide you with proactive updates on the status of your home loan.
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12 men -- members of the secret service have been implicated in colombia in the prostitution scandal. now, if the latter is true, as drew griffin reports the president's trip to cartegena was a scandal waiting to happen. >> reporter: prostitution is so open here, so much part of the tourist trade it's hard to imagine what crimes the cartegena police could possibly find to investigate. what's easy to imagine is just how easy the members of the u.s. security advance team got in trouble. a night on the town, a disco filled with scantily dressed women. and hustlers seemingly at every corner, willing to connect single american men with single available women. >> where is it? just tell me. >> no, i want to show you.
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i want to show you. okay? >> reporter: show you to the alley. when a food vendor saw i wasn't interested in eating, he asked if i was interested a girl. a chica. >> a chica? >> reporter: this is what he gave me. this is just an advertisement for basically what looks like a strip club and it's probably a whorehouse. it was in this environment that the secret service left with two working women, making their way to hotel el caribe where they were staying and that's where the trouble began. the agent either didn't understand the price or was trying to rip off his female escort leading to the now infamous scene in this hotel hallway. where the woman was trying to get her money, colombian police were trying to negotiate a settlement, and the agent refused to open his door.
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the woman involved, dania suarez, has now hired an attorney and through statements credited to that attorney demands she was an escort, not a prostitute. her attorney isn't talking. neighbors confirm dania suarez lives here down this dirt alleyway in the middle-class section of cartegena. through the wall, they say they were stunned to see this picture in the paper was the single mother now credited with discrediting the u.s. secret service. and her neighbors say she has not been back since the news broke. they don't know where she went. somebody came and removed suitcases from her apartment where she lived with her school-age son. they say this woman was a model neighbor. they never really knew what she did for a living. other than for the fact she worked hard and she took care of her child. a person who answered the phone at her attorney's number would
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not confirm the rumeors she is trying to sell her story. police here in colombia have spent the last several days trying to track down every single woman that came out of that bar with a u.s. soldier or a secret service member. trying to find out how old they are. what their story was. but the other half of this story is gone. all the americans involved pulled out before police had a chance to talk to them. colombian police admit their investigation is pretty much over because no one can seem to find any crime. with one glaring exception. colombians like americans are struggling to understand why the secret service sent here to protect the president acted so irresponsibly. drew griffin, cnn, cartegena, colombia. well, we're following another story tonight. isha is back with the bulletin.
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>> police officers today testified about arriving at the crime scene in the trial of the man accused of killing jennifer hudson's mother, brother and nephew. hudson's sister testified yesterday that her estranged m husband threatened to kill her family. and dick clark died last wednesday at a hospital and he was 82 and check out this video from northwest china. a teenage girl walking and talking on the phone fell low pavement into a sink hole about 20 feet deep. a cab driver pulled over and jumped the in to help her. firefighters came to the scene and they both climbed up a ladder to safety. thanks very much. coming up, three drunk guys take an unauthorized trip to sea world and steal a penguin. the ridiculist is next.
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time now for the ridiculist. tonight, we're adding the case of the purloined penguin. in the feckless and the flightless, three drunk guys stole it from the sea world in australia. where as most drunk guys try to pick up chicks, this brainiac got the whole penguin and being in their late teens, early 20s as well as bombed out their minds, they captured the moment on video for posterity. >> a penguin. >> i can't believe how -- i have a penguin in my apartment. >> that's when they woke up hung over and realized they had a
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penguin. while they were at sea world, they also videotaped themselves in engages in a little dwi -- diving while intoxicating. >> and there's not all they did that night. >> diving in there, man. >> still undetected by the sea world security, they swam with the dolphins. >> look at them. [ bleep ] dolphins. >> that's right, they swam with the dolphins. might as well. i mean, you're there, right? it's nighttime, you're wasted, why not? now that the police have the video it's undeniable that they did this on porpoise. we had to do this on tape delay because you know how many times i had to do it to get it right. on porpoise, on porpoise. they did it on purpose. porpoise. on purpose. they did it on porpoise.
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porpoise. i was there. i did have it. porpoise. porpoise. put it back. porpoise. on porpoise. porpoise. poor -- not pour, porpoise. on porpoise. sometimes it's not even doing this job. look, i don't want to encourage this kind of behavior but you have to admit just from a stand point of epic drunken adventures it rivals the movie "the hangover." ♪ [ snoring ] >> oh! >> he's not kidding, there's a tiger in there. >> no, there isn't. >> yeah. >> how does a tiger get in the bathroom? >> hey, bro, mind putting on some pants i feel weird asking. >> so getting back to the drunk
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guys, well, they panicked the next morning and let the penguin go in a nearby waterway. he was eventually rescued and returned to the water park. this happens to be a love story. not for the drunk guys, but for dirk the penguin. >> dirk had another reason not to stray too far -- his partner, peaches. while she's been somewhat coy this morning, no doubt she is relieved to see him again. >> dirk and peaches, reunited and it feels so good. dirk and peaches, like a porn name, right? meanwhile, the guys feel pretty bad. >> we aren't -- all three of us are sorry to sea world and all the time they lost searching for dirk. >> the three -- the three face charges next month including trespassing, stealing an unlawfully keeping a protected animal. they have been convicted of being the hardest partying dudes ever on the ridiculist. that's it for us. thanks for watching. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. mitt romney's big night. the general election,